Article written by
Adam Pascarella,
UPenn Law ’14
Let’s start with the basics. The price of law school has dramatically risen in the past several decades. In 1985, the median tuition and fees for law schools was $1,792. That price has increased nearly 23-fold, with the median tuition in 2012 being $40,732.
Compared to our parents or grandparents, we’re living in a different world. Some law school grads—especially after the 2008 financial crisis—have had trouble finding steady employment, which led to stress in paying off their law school loans. A simple Google search for “law school loan horror stories” may make you think twice before attending law school.
Therefore, it is critical to review the costs of law school before attending. The investment will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, so you want to ensure that you are choosing the best school for you—in terms of academics, location, and cost.
An easy way to compare the costs of particular law schools is to use free tools provided by AdmissionsDean or Law School Transparency. These tools will provide you a basic estimate of your costs, and they make it easy to take a comparative view when contemplating multiple law schools.
Having said this, every law school provides an estimate budget for tuition and fees, along with estimates for things like living expenses and books. Schools use these budgets for financial aid (as we will discuss below), but they also provide a good estimate of your total costs for attending a year of law school. Note that this estimate is only for the upcoming or current academic year. Your 2L and 3L costs, in all likelihood, will be slightly higher.
As just one example, Yale Law School (ranked as the number one law school in the U.S. by U.S. News & World Report) released its 2019-2020 basic budget. Tuition is $63,878; the university administrative & activities fee is $2,250; room, board & personal expenses are $18,915; books are $1,100; and university hospitalization coverage is $2,450. This makes a grand total of $88,593. Multiply that by three years and you are looking at a total price of (at least) $265,779.
While this example may be on the expensive end of the law school spectrum, you will have to do this math for each school that you are thinking of attending.
The bottom line: no matter where you attend, law school is an expensive endeavor.
